Havoc Expanded
by Hexjr
Summary: The story of Rayman 3, more detailed, expanded and extended. Featuring some of the characters and elements that were ultimately cut. A horde of black lums are about to enslave the Glade of Dreams, and Rayman has to once again save the world.


Chapter 1

The night of the Glade of Dreams was very serene and tranquil. As usual.

The two Moons were full and reflected their light upon the land from the cloudless sky. From the depths of the Primordial Forest, thousands of lums shone a dim, red light faintly to illuminate their surroundings – which wasn't anything unusual either, the lums were always shining, and they were everywhere. Flying aimlessly in the woods, gliding softly in the air, playing with each other above the shallow, clear ponds scattered around the forest.

The two light sources met above the jungle and formed in the soft mist a chiaroscuro that had a mythical feeling into it.

All in all, the night was very beautiful.

High above the forest, a bridge was suspended between two cliffs. It had been there for a long time, as had also the small, lit cottages and walkways circling the rock formations – in fact, no one even remembered when the bridge was constructed. It wasn't a large one, nor was it important in any ways – it was just a small, narrow wooden bridge connecting the two cliffs together.

Along a narrow, wandering path came a group of Teensies; they looked joyous and had probably partied the whole evening for some reason known only to the Teensies. The Teensies were originally created to be the guardians of the Glade's pathways and crossroads, but only a few Teensies had stayed in the work to this day, and all the other ones had long since abandoned their original jobs and formed races to live ordinary lives. This didn't really matter, as there were so many Teensies that all of them simply couldn't take care of the roads and paths.

These Teensies were of the Sylkin tribe; the Sylkins are forest-dwellers and shepherds, and they always dress in red and carry nomadic staffs. The group crossing the bridge consisted of five members, the fifth riding a brown mawpaw. The first four Sylkins ran happily over the bridge laughing, but the mawpaw lowered and shook its horned head and made a quiet snort, reluctant to cross the wobbly bridge. The shepherd riding the creature yelled for his comrades, who came back to help, but even the five couldn't get the animal to move. Suddenly a small, flying flash of green darted to the scene and forcefully pushed the mawpaw onto the bridge – it was the greenbottle Murfy, sometimes also known as the Flying Encyclopaedia, though he had grown bored to the nickname nowadays and had begun to seek adventures of his own.

The Sylkins thanked Murfy for pushing the animal to the bridge. "No problem", said Murfy, proud of his amazing skills as a hero. To his knowledge, he had just saved the day. Now he could begin his own, first real adventure!

Unbeknownst to Murfy and the Sylkins, something was happening deep below them, in the forest. Between the dense trees, everything went suddenly cold, and suddenly a small smoke-like pitch-black puff appeared from behind the woods. It was a hairy black ball the size of a lum with large, bloodshot eyes and a grey mouth that seemed to almost split the creature's body in half. It had two insect-like wings and two black arms with dark grey hands. From its humongous mouth it let out a screeching, maniacal scream and buzzed next to the nearest lum it could find. The creature touched the lum with its thick fingers and suddenly the lum turned in a puff of dark energy into a similar hairy ball, only without hands, losing its glow. The first ball moved onto the next lum, then the next one, then the next one, and every time it converted the lums into similar, hairy balls which started following the first one around.

Soon enough the smoky ball had an army of slobbering, red-eyed hairy balls behind it.

Back on the bridge, Murfy was still boasting about his skills as a hero, when the group saw an enormous swarm of black, hairy orbs rise from the forest. Murfy stopped his tale and started screaming incessantly, as the Sylkins ran quickly away from the bridge and left their precious mawpaw standing helplessly on the structure. As the dark swarm moved closer to the bridge, Murfy, too, flew away, trying to escape the strange, black creatures. The swarm, however, was not interested of Murfy or the Sylkins.

The leader of the swarm, the one with the arms, made a sudden stop and hung still in the air, laughing maniacally. The swarm itself attacked the mawpaw, which couldn't defend itself and was soon covered with the black spheres. The spheres, however, retreated as fast as they had attacked, leaving the mawpaw once again standing helplessly on the bridge, alive. But without any fur.

The fur had been stolen by the creatures, plucked hair by hair from the mawpaw's skin, and now the black creatures returned to their leader carrying the mawpaw's hair. They started twirling around the leader, weaving the the threads together, and as they retreated, they revealed a hideous figure inside: it looked like some kind of a gangster wearing a brown, crudely-woven sack-cloth costume. Its head was grey-brown and resembled that of a toad, and on its head it wore a huge, brown wide-brimmed hat. Its eyes were just black sockets with tiny, white pupils. It just stood there silently, scanning the environment, until its gaze fixed on something unusual.

It was a large, red mushroom not far from the gangster-like creature – a completely ordinary mushroom as such, but it was shaking. _Mushrooms don't shake like that_, the sack-cloth creature thought, _mushrooms are immobile._ The ugly creature picked up a large blunderbuss literally out of nowhere – its minions surely couldn't have woven it out of the mawpaw's fur; maybe it was simply lying around in the forest with no practical use to anyone? – turned to the mushroom, and hit it with the blunderbuss.

Behind the mushroom was Murfy, who had been hiding there all the time and seen everything that had happened. Nothing remained of his previous heroism and courage; in front of a real danger, he was just a small, frightened greenbottle. When the sack-cloth creature's gun hit and broke the mushroom, Murfy panicked immediately and quickly flew away. He buzzed through the forest, seeking for a shelter, and panicked even more when he saw that the ugly monstrosity was still following him, growling and swearing as the thick vines slapped its fabric face. Murfy was so scared that he forgot to look forward, and crashed violently into a particularly tall tree.

The greenbottle held his aching head, fell, bounced off something blue, and then thumped to the ground. He tried to focus his vision, and after a short while, succeeded. In front of him, leaning on the tree, rested a large frog – no, it was a glute. It was almost thrice as large as Murfy, and its colour was strangely dark blue – almost all the other glutes were reddish-brown.

Then Murfy noticed the bizarre creature lying beside the glute and immediately realized who the beings were. _How is it possible that I _always _stumble upon these two guys when there's some kind of trouble?_ Murfy thought, _why can't I ever be a real hero myself?_ Then he heard the sack-cloth creature's heavy footsteps and grumblings from behind him, quailed, and whispered as loudly as he could: "Globox? Globox! Wake up! Trouble from six o'clock!"

Slowly the blue glute opened his eyes. "Murfy?" he mumbled. "What is a greenbottle like you doing in this forest at this –" The glute, Globox, quit his sentence as he saw the hideous being moving towards them from the shadows. He gasped, jumped up and ran up to the tree he had been sleeping against. Globox moved to his odd-looking pal and said: "Wake up, we've got problems here! Wake up now!"

The creature Globox was trying to wake up was very strange. It had yellowish-brown skin, a large nose and odd-looking thick blonde hair, but the most oddball thing about the being was that it had no arms, legs, or a neck; its large head, gloved hands and feet were disconnected from its body, floating in the air. On its body it wore a purple hoodie with a red hood, and a white 'O' painted in the centre of the shirt, and on its limbless feet it had two yellow shoes with orange spiral-like patterns on the sides. And it didn't wake up or even react to Globox.

As the sack-cloth monster approached, Globox tried to pull the creature up into the tree, but his scrawny arms weren't strong enough; the bizarre creature just fell into the ground again, still asleep. "Murfy!" Globox shouted, "Give me a hand here!" But Murfy was too scared to do anything helpful. The sack-cloth creature was now only a few metres away. It came to a halt, observed the three beings in the tree and quickly raised its blunderbuss.

As the sack-cloth monster pulled the trigger, Murfy grabbed Globox's friend quickly from the hair, flying him to safety. But the limbless creature's floating hands, from which Globox had pulled, remained in the glute's own hands, disconnected from the being itself. Globox climbed higher to the tree faster than lightning, narrowly dodging the hideous monster's shots. Murfy sighed in relief and flew deeper into the woods.

After a short while, Rayman woke up and saw that he was at a very odd and unpleasant situation.


End file.
